“Well done, Sovereign.” Tiburon sauntered to stand beside where the Emperor gripped the palace balustrade, his leader glaring as the masses scattered now that the evening’s fracturing had ended.

“Mission report.”

Grinning, chipped teeth on display, Tiburon mocked, “You give Sigil too little credit. In four days we’ve already found three mutilated bodies tossed aside on the street. How many agents do you think she’s murdered that we haven’t found? I don’t see any reason to pester her when she’s doing a better job of resolving the problem than you ever did.”

The emperor's instant attack was a blur, Tiburon’s neck held in Sovereign’s grip. “You give me nothing of worth while she is out there... alone.”

The weight of a heavy hand came to rest on Sovereign’s shoulder, Karhl speaking plainly. “Sigil may be watching. Is this what you’d have her see?”

Dropping the ever aggravating Tiburon, Sovereign heeded Karhl’s warning.

Before the scarred one’s armored body could straighten, the Lord Commander drew back his lips to snarl. “Be careful, Sovereign. If you want her back, you need me. I’m the only one of the Brotherhood she trusts.”

The nastiness of Sovereign’s laugh was nothing to the hate in his eyes. “You always imagined yourself to be greater than you are.”

Cracking his neck, Tiburon let his disgust, his scorn, lay open in his expression for every Brother on that balcony to witness. “She’ll never come to you, not now that she knows what you did.” Armored fingers pointed to Karhl. “Just as she’ll never go to him. She wanted to trust you, Karhl. I think she may even have cared for you. She won’t anymore.”

White hair chimed, Karhl shaking his head in deep disapproval. “Careful, Tiburon. You cannot stand against us both.”

Tiburon’s eyes swept over his collected species, at the sorry remains of what had once been a vast and terrible force, shouting so every last damn one of them would hear. “Sigil is faithful to those who have earned her trust—more faithful than you can imagine. You see,” eyes greener than envy snapped right to the leader of his kind, “I was the one who told her how to escape from Condor. Just as I helped her escape the Durazgabi system by sacrificing my fleet and my face, before you might reach her.”

“WHAT?” The balcony shook, Sovereign crushing the marble balustrade under his grip.

Before the emperor might strike, before Karhl might tear him in half, Tiburon let a grin break across his face. He was not afraid of the fire, he was not afraid of Sovereign’s judgement, and he was not afraid of death. “For almost a century, I’ve known exactly where she was and who she was with.”

The emperor roared, the man’s eyes wild as he gathered psionics powerful enough to bring down the palace if allowed to rage uncontrolled.  

“She was happy, Sovereign! The Axirlan saved our girl, he adored her, helped her, taught her, raised her. She was happy until you barged in and took all she’d worked so hard to achieve away. Like Arden, you are selfish, impatient, and unworthy.” There was a change in his face, Tiburon showing an anger darker than black. “Even without having choked down her serum, I loved her enough to leave her alone!”

Sovereign was not moved. “You will suffer for this betrayal, for all the Brothers who died searching for our wounded female.”

Tiburon was not done, the furious warrior stalking forward to bellow right in the face of the galaxy’s greatest terror. “Her Que would have died of old age had you waited. What was another hundred years when we controlled so much of the known universe? What was a hundred years compared to her joy? You could have brought her here gently had you not been so self-consumed.”

Sovereign flat out laughed. “And let her rampage through the galaxy when the alien was no longer able to control her? Did you not see the damage she caused herself on Pax? There were no guarantees a life left in that hellhole would have continued smoothly. She’s safe here!”

“Safe?” Shrugging, Tiburon scoffed. “Since you’ve touched her life, she is constantly miserable, friendless, and terrified. You take and take and force and twist and lie. And what have those lies achieved? She’s gone, Sovereign, hunting her mutilated children because you couldn’t bring yourself to kill them when you should have!”

Sovereign struck the man with the force of his pent up fury, Tiburon’s armored body flattened to the ground by psionics that would have left a human nothing more than pulp. “You would dare?”

Spitting out a bloody tooth, Tiburon gave all he had to fight the force of a stronger man’s power, to turn his head under the monumental strain and look his attacker in the eye. “Now you seek to defend the girls? Are they Unsalvageable or aren’t they? You can’t have it both ways. They are your children or they are Soshiia: half-formed.

Karhl interjected, crouched to meet their betrayer’s eyes. “Have you been in contact with Maylin and Vara? Do you know where they are?”

“I know who does.” The weight of Sovereign’s boot settling on his back made it difficult for Tiburon to breathe, still the Lord Commander managed a chuckle. “Arden is here, right now in the city.”

“That isn’t possible.” Sovereign frowned deeply, running the probabilities through every scenario he might imagine before he leveled the death stroke. “No ship could have made it through the blockade.”

Between coughs, Tiburon countered, “No imperial ship. But with a cloaked Tessan vessel your snake would know just how to creep into the garden.”

The emperor flexed his leg, shoving his heel deeper into Tiburon’s bowing spine.

Even as his ribs began to crack, Tiburon laughed. “I raised you, Sovereign, trained you, and you are my Brother... an old part of me might even consider you my son. But Sigil gave me the means to finally slaughter Dr. Saniel. For that, I would die for her long before I would die for you.”

Sovereign pulled his mouth into a sneer. “You’re not dying for me, or for her. You’re just dying.”

“Enough, Sovereign.” Karhl stood tall, forcing his bulk between the emperor and his prey. “If what Tiburon claims is true, Arden’s plots may be a greater threat than the Soshiia. I do not believe he would lie.” Icy eyes glared down at the sputtering Brother at his feet. “That is not how he operates.”

Kneeling down to grab Tiburon by the skull, Sovereign peeled his inferior’s head from the ground and looked dead into the eyes of the Brother he hated most. “Sigil will not be able to save you from me when this is over.”

It was difficult for Tiburon to breathe, his last warning a wheeze. “And who is going to save you from Sigil once Arden gets his claws into her. Your judgement cannot be changed, so long as you live, he can never have her. He’ll deactivate her implant, convince her to kill you.” Struggling to stand, Tiburon wiped the blood from his mouth. “You should be thanking me for saving you from your own blindness, boy.”

***

It was just like Pax. He had been playing a game with her, popping in and out of her awareness like a ghost, winking from a corner, only to vanish—brushing a kiss to her cheek when she stalked through the crowd.

Arden was haunting her.

It had been going on for days, Sigil sensing him but unsure of exactly where he was. At first she’d thought the Brotherhood was about to descend upon her. She’d pulled a knife, fingered a stolen plasma blaster strapped to her hip.

...and then nothing.

A few moments later, Sigil scented another Soshiia, all thoughts of Arden forgotten. She’d found the Unsalvageable peppered in crowds, snatching them up from the masses like a bird of prey. Mostly she went unseen, those around her unaware the body glued to her side, the one with an arm over her shoulder was either already dead or suffering greatly.

Useful psionics, that’s what Sovereign had called them, were much, much more than useful. Her applications had been graceless at the beginning, but now, Sigil could tease a corpse to look like it walked, she could gently manipulate objects, even people with a light touch she’d never been able to master as a child.

Stacked against her enemy, against the Soshiia’s mutated Converts, she felt powerful. And it felt good to hunt. She felt good.

But then there would be a flash of the golden one.

Lifting her head, licking coppery blood from her lips, Sigil knew he was near. On the ground before her was another of the dead. Fresh meat she used to fortify her body. There was something about every Unsalvageable she’d tasted. They were all sweet, familiar.

They tasted just a little bit like Sovereign.

Sigil had been gorging herself on the sorry fools.

Pinky finger between her lips, picking out a piece of meat stuck between her teeth, Sigil sat back on her heels, and perked her ears. Yes, Arden was there, she could hear his mind, his gentle offer of non-violence.

“If you only knew what I risked to come to you.”

It was the first time in five days Sigil had heard him dare to speak. Immediately she pinpointed the slip of shadow he thought to hide in, smiling so he could see her blood stained gums. “You are supposed to be fawning all over the Tessan Authority. Did Sovereign bring you back to tempt me home?”

One step out of the dark, half his body still shadowed, Arden exposed himself. “You know he didn’t. I had been ordered away from you. As it was, it could have been decades before I saw you again.”

Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, Sigil stood, her meal only half finished. “But here you are.”

There was a flash in Arden’s golden eyes. “It’s how he orders that dictates what I can and cannot do. For those of us willing to risk ourselves, there are ways around his unmitigated influence.”

Cracking her neck and the bones in her fingers in preparation of combat, Sigil smiled. “And what was his exact order?”

Arden lifted his arms, showing her his hands were empty, that he was unarmed and at her mercy. “Understand there is so much I want to tell you, so much I wish you knew, but I cannot physically form the words you need to hear. Had Sovereign been more thorough when he’d commanded me to leave you, had he said, ‘never see her again,’ I would have had to approach you with my eyes closed.”

Tiburon had said something like this when they’d clashed in the pub weeks ago. It was a conversation Sigil had thought over many times in the last few days, sitting with the remaining vials of semen he’d given her held tightly in her fist. The scarred Lord Commander had brought up the concept of her children in parameters that were inaccurate but telling. He’d planted the seed; he’d tried to communicate with her the way the two of them spoke best—through threats and violence.

Toeing the corpse at her feet, pushing it aside to clear the way, Sigil said, “And here you are, interrupting my lunch.”

Braving a few steps closer, Arden offered everything he was. “Sweet sister, let me help you.”

Arden lacked Sovereign’s emotional cloaks. Looking into him was unsophisticated and almost comforting. The Herald was not lying, but that didn’t mean he was telling the truth. It was as he’d claimed; it’s how one sculpted perception and reality.

Sigil did not trust him at all. “And just how would you do that?”

Arden swallowed, visibly tense. “You must figure out who they are. I cannot say it—I can’t write it. I can’t tell you, but you know! My journals were full of hints: when their uprising began. How the Unsalvageable, their agents, are corrupted. There is only one way such a thing could happen.”

Sigil had no interest in remaining unprotected where the Brotherhood might find her, she had no interest in distractions from the sly Herald. “By another female of our kind. I know.”

“And therein lies the complication.” Arden held her eyes, earnest for her to understand. “The Soshiia are not other females.”

Eyes narrowed dangerously thin, Sigil hissed. “They are my daughters. Sovereign told me what was done.”

Arden did not say a word, but he looked very much as if he wanted to.

Sigil could play the roundabout guessing game. She filled in the blanks. “Who were altered by High Adherent Corths when he found the embryos damaged.”

Arden’s eyes got wider, urging her to continue. His words were carefully chosen, picked one at a time as if looking for the right puzzle pieces to craft a sentence that might guide her. “And how would he do what you propose?”

Her expression grew internally focused, as if Sigil were conducting some great mental mathematics. “You lack the technology to clone me, otherwise there would be many copies. Sovereign also swore he’d never do such a thing. I believe him.”

“He didn’t, and we can’t.”

Arden was wasting her time, Sigil’s impatience obvious. “I don’t fault High Adherent Corths for trying to save the daughters I’d ruined. If he took cells from me to patch them, he would have had my thanks.”

Arden shook his head as if to warn her. “Keep that in mind when you meet them.”

Sigil abandoned her meal for a new offering, her hand reaching out to take Arden’s arm in her grip. “You know where they are? You know how to end this?”

He could not have looked more relieved to have her close, to feel her touch, even if her fingers squeezed to the point his bones ached. “All they want is to set your Brothers free from Sovereign’s influence. We are his slaves.”